1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an inspection method and a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device, and to a technique applicable to, for example, a method of reducing the percent defective of a semiconductor device.
2. Related Art
In order to reduce the percent defective of a semiconductor device, it is important to guarantee the quality of a film of the semiconductor device. Particularly, the analysis of the surface of the film is essential. For example, a method (for example, SCAS News 2004-I pp 11-14) of analyzing components of elements (for example, films) constituting a semiconductor device, a method (for example, Hitachi Review, Vol. 88 No. 3 pp: 65-68 (2006) and Hitachi Review, Vol. 86, No. 7, pp: 465 to 470 (2004)) of measuring the surface shape of a film, and the like are used in this analysis.
When a film is formed on a substrate, film-forming conditions at the moment of terminating film formation are different from film-forming conditions when the film formation is continuing. In addition, since the surface of the film comes into contact with the atmosphere, the composition of the surface of the film is often different from the internal composition of the film. The inventors have found that a surface layer like a “cover” that restricts the infiltration of impurities into a film is present on the surface of the film. Based on such new knowledge, the inventors consider that since the composition of the surface of a film formed on a substrate influences “sealing performance” of a “cover” of the surface, the composition may greatly influence the percent defective of a semiconductor device. However, although there is a method of checking the shape of a film surface or an adsorbate of the surface, it has been difficult to check whether the composition of the film surface is in a normal state.
Other problems and novel features will be made clearer from the description and the accompanying drawings of the present specification.